Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

For a moment there I lived in the false hope that Senator Marshall was going to give a serious response to the questions that were answered by government members today, but my hopes have been dashed yet again. That can't be considered as a serious response. Labor may claim to have all the plans that they like, but of course they're not in government, so they actually can't deliver anything. They're not in government. They might aspire to that, if they understand what that 'aspiration' might mean. But they're not in government, so they can't deliver. They can make all the promises they like. In fact, in my home seat, where I live, in Braddon, they're making a whole range of promises at the moment, but they have to win two elections in Braddon before they can deliver on any of those promises. They ought to be focusing on the first one, which probably should have happened in October last year, if the truth be known—if the local member had actually fessed up when she should have fessed up back in October—and we could actually have had that process over and done with already.

The coalition has a comprehensive tax plan to deliver to the country. It was brought down in the budget. As a duly-elected government, I think it's quite reasonable that we aspire to have that legislation passed by the parliament. If the opposition want to put an alternative plan in place, they can win government in their own right. There will be an election sometime next year, and they will have an opportunity to do that.

The opposition asks, 'Why won't you adopt our tax plan?' If you look at the Labor Party's history of tax plans, even the ones that they've announced quite recently, you'd understand quite well why we wouldn't adopt their tax plan. For example, look at their absolutely disastrous retiree tax plan that they released earlier this year—the one that they said was well considered, well thought out and well planned. It would rip out from underneath some retirees up to 30 per cent of their entire income. It lasted two weeks before it was modified. The modifications were allegedly to exempt pensioners from the tax, because Labor's well-thought-out retiree tax would actually impact even pensioners.

After the modifications and a bit more consideration of this disastrous nan-and-pop tax that they were proposing we then found that it didn't even actually exempt all pensioners. There were still some pensioners who would be impacted by this tax that would rip up to 30 per cent of someone's entire income from them. It would strip that away, so someone with a total income of $24,000 a year would lose $5,000. Labor claim that these people are high-income earners. They would have a significant lump of income ripped away from them by this disastrous tax plan, which is, I might add, how Labor propose to pay for their magic tax plan.

They claim that their nan-and-pop tax plan is about fairness, yet they'd rip from nans and pops around this country up to 30 per cent of their income to give tax cuts to other people in the community. I don't know anyone who thinks it's fair that their nan and pop lose up to 30 per cent of their income to pay for their tax cut. I wouldn't want my nan and pop to lose up to 30 per cent of their income so that I can get a tax cut. Yet this is how Labor are intending to pay for the majority of the tax cuts that they've got in the system at the moment.

They trot around asking, 'Why won't you support our tax plan?' I'll tell you why, because I don't believe that the nans and pops of Australia should have up to 30 per cent of their income ripped away to pay for someone else's tax cut. I don't think that that's fair. I think that that demonstrates that the Labor Party and Mr Shorten don't understand what fairness is, just as they don't understand what aspiration is. They don't have a decent plan to manage the economy, as the government have. We can afford the tax cuts that we're proposing because we have managed the economy well and kept the economy strong. We have grown the economy, jobs and wages— (Time expired)